Wednesday, May 28, 2008

We're in Lima to continue the handover with theguy that's replacing me in my current job. We camea day early to try and do some tourist stuff, but to goand see machu pichu really takes at least 3 days which meanswe'll have to be satisfied with seeing it on the national geographicshow.

We did go see the magic fountain park here which is pretty nice.It would be more fun if it was hot, but the weather here is prettycold due to the humboldt current coming up from antartica, so it iscold like New Orleans is in the winter, humid and cold. That feels a lotworse than the dryer cold you feel in Bogota, and it is certainly toocold to frolic in fountains.

The main fountains are pretty nice, one is the tallest in the worldapparently, and they do dancing air powered fountains like the bellagioin vegas. The different thing they do is a light show with lasers anda projection on the mist from the fountains that is pretty cool.

We could do that at the office, show up with a mist machine and a projectorat the client's office and project emotional presentations about drillingon the mist. Give them a quick "sorry about the mess" and scoot out withan emotion driven sale.

We're staying on the coast in Mirafloreswhich has some nice views. The people atthe Marriott were super nice after we movedhere from Los Delfines. (supposedly a nicehotel but really just expensive with dolphins.they gave us a crappy smelly room, then whenwe tried to leave early they wanted to charge ushalf a day.) Here's some negative googlejuice:Los Delfines Lima suck, los delfines Lima suck.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Bob the On-Screen Scientist recently wrote some stories about brushes withdeath that he's had. I'm not as good a writer as he is, but I have had afew near misses that if they had gone slightly differently I could have beensquished, broken or splattered.

The most recent was a near car wreck we had on I-10 back in 2004,and it was one of the first things I blogged about. If it hadn't been forthe company's defensive driving training that is manic about looking inthe mirror when braking, we would have been the white part of a tractor-trailor oreo.

I've had some near misses working on oil rigs over 15 years. It is much saferworking on the rigs today, when I started in 1991 there was still a macho attitudethat we had to do dangerous things rather than ask the roughnecks that workedup in the derrick to do them for us. Now safety programs amongst the rig crewsenforce pussification for them as well, and something that is clearly dangerouscan be called dangerous.

For our equipment to work we need several sensors installed on the rig floorand up in the derrick. Since one of the sensors costs around $2k and can bedestroyed by over-torqueing, it was company policy that we had to ride up onair hoists to install them (nothing was more important than safety, except $2000).The rig hands go up in the derrick on a daily basis, but I typically went up in thederrick every two or three months, which meant that I was never really good atit and in the few dozen times I did it I was scared every time.

One time around 1995 I was sent out with an Indian trainee. I did what wasnormal for my position, I asked the trainee to go up in the derrick and installthe sensor, but he said [indian accent on] "oh no, that would be very dangerous andI don't want to do it" [IA off]. I was stuck in the intermediate position of not wantingto call him a pussy to get him to do it, but not wanting go up in the derrick. FinallyI said "fine, I'll do it", and stomped off to put on a riding harness.

One way to get up in the derrick is a ladder that goes up to the monkeyboard wherethe derrickman works to rack drillpipe. The other way to go up in the derrick is a ridingharness, which is a belt with a small wooden chair to sit on, or the safer versions witha belt and loops around the thighs and shoulders connected to a wire rope via a bigd-ring. The cable is picked up and lowered by a small air hoist on the rig floor, and itruns over a sheave in the derrick. The highly trained operator is whichever roughneckis not busy doing something else, usually the newest guy.

On that particular rig, the standpipe where I had to install the sensor was outside thederrick, so I would have to go up 90 ft or so, climb out to the outside of the derrick thenbe lowered down to the place to install the sensor. So I had the brilliant idea that insteadof carrying the connector cable with me, they could lower me down to the rig floor, I'd pickup just the end I needed and quickly zoom back up to the top. done.

Everything went ok until I climbed outside the derrick and was lowered down. The cablehooked on something, so even though more cable was paying out, I was sitting still whilea loop of cable was quickly growing in front of my eyes. I was screaming "whoa" and wavingmy arms, then I tried "fucking whoa" and the roughneck stopped the airhoist. I could seethe loop was at least 10 feet of loose cable, and I had enough time to wonder if the leg loopswould hold me when I fell or if I would fall hard enough to squirt out like a watermelon seedfrom my restraints, then fall the other 60 feet to the rig floor. Whatever was holding the cableup stopped holding it, and the loop of cable was free. I started to fall and I could hear a high pitched girly scream coming from somewhere that ended with a "woomph" when I hit theend of the cable. I swung around for a second then the roughneck started to lower me again.Still alive!

Now I had to face my stupid idea. The outside of the derrick isn't vertical it's sloping outwardto it's base. I thought I could push off and sort of rappel down, but falling had pulled up theharness so that I really couldn't push with my legs. So I basically crawled down the faceof the derrick, like an inept spiderman, almost hanging up a couple more times.

I got down and was exhausted. My Indian trainee said [indian accent on] "Joe, thatwas very harrowing". [IA off]

Friday, May 16, 2008

One of the advantages of shifting back into fucked up career modeis that I have more time to read weblogs. Since lately I'm spendinga lot more time waiting while a slow-ass scroll bar inches across thescreen, rather than proactively functionalizing a team enhancingflowchart, I can surf around the web and read whatever crap thatdoesn't flash up a nsfw picture.

One of the funniest is MadAtoms, which appears to be made up ofstruggling actors and writers, and almost every post can cause acappuchino out the nose moment. [best post: I Would Do Anything for Love…But No Way In Hell Can I Do That]

Another good weblog that is pretty much nsfw is hobo-stripper.When I was single I spent almost all my money on strippers, the restI wasted. So a weblog about a stripper/hobo/goddess is always interesting to me.

I found and lost a website where an artist is drawing cartoons describing peoplesdreams that readers submit. I spent several moments googling it, and I can't find itso now I'm wondering if I dreamt it. I wasted an hour earlier in the week while I downloaded some software reading a couple of years of comics drawn based on peoplesdreams, and it was fantastically accurate. All the dreams I've had this trip aretoo weird to post in public, so I think I won't send any of my dreams when I find thatlink again.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Rand Simberg has an interesting article on solar powerbeing generated by a new technique by a company calledSunrgi. I have some doubts, here's what i commented:

my bet is that the sunrgi system is vaporware.

I took a solar installation class about 7 years ago and someone in the class asked why concentrators weren't used to focus sunlight on the pv panels. The instructor said that the thermal characteristic of solar cells gives higher resistance at higher temperatures, and you really want to do everything you can during the design phase to keep the array cool....I think this would be a low efficiency pv with some solar thermal mixed in. Since they specifically mention their cooling system extends cell life, they are probably (rightly) worried that the higher temp will degrade the cells. The economics of pv depends on the panels lasting 30 years, if you have to disassemble an array with a bunch of lenses on top every 5 years and replace the modules, it's not going to be cheap. [pv cost/hr = (equipment + installation)/ (# of hours the system will work) + maintenance] (it works like an oil well, you spend $20k to build a system, it give you 5 hours of full power per day for 30 years]. eg, for a 2KW pv that cost $20k over 30 years = $.18/kWh.

of course I hope their product is perfect and I can stick a 4 kw plant in my backyard in 5 years for $30k.

......................

The main problems with PV are still the same ones that it has alwayshad, it is really expensive to generate a lot of electricity and it's really expensive to store electricity. If you want 500 watts available 24 hours you can do thatfor $10000, but if you want 4000 watts available 24 hours, then youneed to cover a lot of space with pv, and store it somewhere. As thebatteries scale up, things get expensive. It's too expensive to run A/C with PV.

The best way to do solar power is look at the loads first, use gas forthermal loads, use fluorescents for lighting and get rid of thief loadslike instant on tv's and vcrs. Turn off everything at the power stripwhen not in use. Now that you've improved things by 5%, tackle thereal problem, which is Air conditioning. If you live in the mountainsor in the northeast, you're done, size the panels for your reduced electricload and use a line-tie system. If you're in the southeast, look at agroundcoupled heatpump, or go back to the ceiling fans on the frontporch technique.

What is really going to drive this revolution is extremely high power costs.People aren't like oil companies that see an 8% return as good deal, peoplewant instant certain payback, and that will only happen when pv is cheaperthan oil with a repayment cost in just a couple of years, not 22. Plug in hybridswill be another driver, when people can use a huge battery pack and charge itfrom the roof, that'll make things change.

If the price of oil can stay high for another 5 years, then the US will be radicallydifferent at the end of that time power-wise. The more likely outcome will bethat the economy will continue to slow, we'll stop buying plastic chinese crap, thenthey'll slow down, and the price of oil will head back to 12 dollars, resetting thesystem again at 1980.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

I'm in Italy, and if everything goes ok we'll move over herein a month or so. If everything doesn't go ok I'll finally get a chanceto demonstrate my entrepreneurial skills cleaning windshields on highway59 in sugarland. My previous assignment is ending, and I don't think I'll getany tropies for the job I did, not even a participation trophy. Oh well.

It's always funny how the jobs that you really work at aren't the oneswhere you're recognized as doing a lot of work. It's possible to skatethrough a whole year, but really nail one presentation where a boss thatmatters is there and suddenly you're a genius, or you work dog hard travelingall over the world doing shit that's not part of your job, and suddenly you'rehappy to stay on doing the job of dishwasher.

The sadness of having to kill my dog, and being away from my family andthe last job ending on such a low note has built up all week. Now I'm holedup in my hotel room drinking kieffer brau, which was the cheapest beer thatthe grocery store sold and faced with the realization that I bought a six packof beer when a suitcase was called for.

Oh woe betide the country that doesn't sell oversized easy to carry boxes with 18, 24 or 36 beers! They shalt not dwell in drunkland nor pass out with the tv at full volume,sleeping until the cleaning lady knocks to see if the crazy gringo croaked.(and that's just after 3 beers, just think what crap I'll write when I'm wound up.my mouse needs a breathalyser for later)

The food here in Ravenna seems to alternate between fantastic and pizza.Since I keep screwing up and not arriving from work before everything closes,pizza seems to be the only option every night. It's good pizza, it's just I seemto be eating an awful lot of it. I did have some super fantastic gnoche andinsalata de pollo in the plaza di popolo earlier in the week, but I tried to repeatthat today and they had already closed at 2:30 pm. doh!

It is nice to be someplace that is extremely secure and I can just wander aroundhalf lost. If you wander around half lost in bogota you are asking to be takenfor a paseo millionario. Here everyone is so old, I'm pretty confident I could takethem using breadsticks as weapons.

Here is a typical Ravenna streetscene, where I am one of the fewpedestrians and everyone elsehas a bike. Apparently there arefree bikes for use here, but I don'tknow if those are just random bikesin racks or specific racks, and I don'tknow enough italian to ask.

I don't want some old guy with abreadstick chasing after me asI ride off on his bike, so I'm stickingwith walking so far.